Apax acquiring online marketplace Yad2 for $950 million, beating out Blackstone
Deal follows rapid progress in London talks and marks Apax’s return to a platform it once lost.
The Apax Partners fund has acquired the Yad2 website. Calcalist has learned that negotiations between Apax and KKR, the controlling shareholder of the site, which is managed by Tomy Schoenfeld, have concluded successfully, and an agreement has now been signed between the two funds.
The terms of the deal were finalized during negotiations held in London. Apax will pay $950 million for Yad2, which operates a sales platform for real estate, cars, and second-hand goods.
The process, led by Citi and Barclays, moved quickly after beginning in August. Six companies initially submitted bids for the tender, but in the past two weeks negotiations accelerated between Apax and KKR, the international investment fund that previously took control of Yad2’s parent company.
Apax has extensive experience in online classifieds. In 2019, it acquired Baltic Classifieds Group, which operates platforms in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, and took it public in London in 2021 with a valuation of around £600 million.
The same year, Apax acquired New Zealand company Trade Me for $1.7 billion and invested in Spain’s Idealista in 2021 at a valuation of €1.3 billion.
Apax previously competed to acquire Yad2 in 2014 but lost to the German company Axel Springer, which purchased the site from Walla for NIS 820 million.
In the current process, Apax outpaced Blackstone, which also submitted a bid. Two other funds, Francisco Partners and Warburg Pincus, withdrew during the final stage of the process.
Blackstone, the world’s largest alternative asset manager, headed by Stephen Schwarzman, has shown strong interest in Yad2 partly due to its large European presence in the sector through its holding in Adevinta, which operates Yad2-like classifieds platforms in ten countries.
Blackstone owns Adevinta together with another American fund, Permira, which also examined the possibility of bidding for Yad2 but ultimately decided not to participate, possibly because it recently acquired the corresponding classifieds site in the United Arab Emirates and is focused on integrating that purchase first.
